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lloUan!! anh tlfi^ Wat 



A SERMON 



BY THE 



REV. CHARLES WOOD, D.D. 




Preached in the 

CHURCH OF THE COVENANT 

WASHINGTON. D. C. 



SUNDAY EVENING 

FEBRUARY 14, 1915 

Printed by Request 



Gift 
Carnegie In«t. 
JUN 3 ''^24 




HOLLAND AND THE WAR 

"A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a 
strong nation." Isaiah 60 :22. 

"The inverted bowl we call the sky," of which Omar 
Khayyam sings, fits so perfectly on the bowl, right side up, 
we call Holland, that the foreigner feels in Holland Hke 
a colossal fly imprisoned between two saucers. Looking up 
from a level thirty to sixty feet below the sea. the rim of 
the bowl cuts the sharp skyline beneath which the w^aves 
roar as if eager to devour either the lid or the body of the 
bowl. 

The history of this shut-in land has been, in academic 
language, a prolonged and unintermittent "bowl fight." 
"Which side w-as to get the bowl and keep it?" was the 
question. Was it to belong to the farmer or to the sailor, 
to the cows or to the fishes, to the Netherlanders or to 
Neptune? This long, ceaseless struggle has not exhausted 
but stimulated the Hollander. The salt of the sea has 
kept his courage fresh and his spirit strong. The Dutch 
farmer is as bluff, hearty and vigorous as the Dutch sailor. 

But this struggle has settled forever the physical aspects 
of the country. In these low, fat fields, fat cattle, owned 
by fat men, milked by fair, if not fat, maidens, will 
always feed. 

1 



From these fields brooms have swept back the sea which 
Xerxes in vain commanded his soldiers to do; but the 
Dutch have used the broom more scientifically than the 
Persian autocrat. They have planted broom corn on the 
dykes in such a way that it binds the soil in a living net- 
work from which structure the seductive waves cannot 
tear it. Dotting these fields are numberless windmills, 
whose long, flapping arms are frightful enough in the twi- 
light to keep a Don Quixote perpetually in the saddle, with 
lance in rest ready to ride down upon these monsters, evi- 
dently bent on devouring the fat cattle and the fair 
maidens. 

Here and there, in the corners of these fields, myriads 
of tulips, with colors more exquisitely gorgeous than any 
oriental carpet, push their heads through the rich soil like 
fairies delivered by the sun god from the dark persons 
of dusky slave dealers. Here peasants toil with all the zest 
with which the tillers of the fields in other lands make 
soberly merry on feast days and church festivals. Here 
the fisher- folk, in some towns, at least, wear curious gar- 
ments, richly ornamented, as if expecting, momentarily, to 
join the other guests at a wedding which never takes place. 

"This land beyond the sea" is the antithesis of the Amalfi, 
of which Longfellow loved to dream, but it, too, has a 
charm which has inspired poets and painters. It has a 
history as splendid and heroic as Amalfi's. "A little one, 
here, has become a thousand, and a small one a strong 
nation." Only 150 miles long and 120 broad, Holland has 
a population of but six millions, yet its colonies number 
thirty-eight millions possessing 730,000 square miles, in 
Java, Sumatra and Borneo, of the East Indies. 



Holland's struggle with the sea, in which this gigantic 
bowl of milk and cheese and tulips was the prize, with the 
possession of a highly profitable trade thrown in, was a 
stimulating sport compared with her struggle with Spain 
for "a place in the sun," with liberty to move around in that 
place, for work or for worship, as she might choose. 

In the Sixteenth Century Holland was the Italy of Nor- 
thern Europe, not only because some of her canalized cities 
like Amsterdam were suggestive of Venice, but because of 
her naissance^ her birth — it was not a renaissance, as in 
Italy — in science, art and commerce. 

Falling by, for her unfortunate marriages, into the merci- 
less hands of the Holy Roman Emperors, Holland found 
herself at last in the clutches of Charles V, the Hapsburg 
autocrat. He was the most powerful man in the world 
at that time. He was the antagonist of Luther, and of 
liberty in every form in both church and state. Inheriting 
the Netherlands, he rubbed his hands with the cruel delight 
the sea must have felt when it swept away the dikes, and 
saw many fair gardens at its mercy. 

Charles was religiously a multi-millionaire, but morally 
he was a pauper. He had religion, such as it was. to give 
away to those who were already satisfied with the one they 
had, and who respectfully declined that which he attempted 
to force on them with devices in which the Spanish Inquisi- 
tion was expert. He pacified Ghent as Louvain and Ter- 
monde were pacified a few months ago, but showing more 
foresight he impoverished without destroying, having in 
mind the possibility of many profitable repetitions. 

His son, Philip, lacked his father's courage and power 
to compel fear if not respect, but Philip's bigotry was a 
much more real thing than his father's. Philip was less 



hypocritical than Charles, though not less immoral, but his 
consistency was unquestioned. He hated all schismatics 
with a holy hatred so complete that it made no exceptions 
for Protestant generals who might have been extraordi- 
narily useful to him in certain exigencies. 

Philip's chosen emissary in Holland was the Duke of 
Alva.' He was, spiritually and Satanically, bone of Philip's 
bone and flesh of his flesh. Between Alva and the sea, 
the Hollanders never hesitated when the choice was left to 
them — that may have been the origin of the adage : "Between 
the devil and the deep sea." — The sea was cruel, but with 
no such refinement of inconceivable cruelty as Alva. 

In the coils of this dragon Holland was the damsel 
about to be crushed, and the St. George to give his life- 
blood to deliver her was William of Orange, as noble a 
knight as ever rode to the rescue of distressed womanhood. 
William was either unknown to Lord Byron or forgotten 
by him, or, it may be the noble Lord could not think of a 
good rhyme for William, or he never would have made 
our Washington the one and only name in all the list of 
the world's worthies, unstained by "guilty glory" or 
"despicable state." 

Motley may have painted William, as Cromwell's court 
painter wished to paint the Protector, "without wart or 
wrinkle, or any such thing." But after all necessary or 
possible deductions, Motley's hero stands in the center of 
that bowl, against which the sea and Spaniard raged, one 
of the most splendid specimens of humanity in the world's 
history. 

William fell like Moses on the borders of the Land of 
Promise. Philip, who laughed out loud when he was told 
about St. Bartholemew's Day, must at least have smiled 



with devout satisfaction when he heard that his hired 
assassin had earned the gold for which he had sold himself 
to Satan. 

Three other shining names are written high on Holland's 
roll of fame: John Van Barneveldt, the victim of religious 
bigotry, called Protestant, which was only a little less re- 
pulsive than the bigotry of Philip, himself; John De Witt, 
the victim of political bigotry, which may be as deadly but is 
not so virulent as the religious form; William III, great- 
grandson of William the Silent, the husband of Mary, 
daughter of James II of England, and so related to Great 
Britain by marriage as Charles and Philip were to Holland, 
he might have proved as great an incubus to his relations- 
in-law as the Spanish kings. But to Macaulay and all 
lovers of popular rights William's coming to England was 
like his great-grandfather's coming to Holland from the 
German city of his birth. 

England was then eagerly scanning the horizon for a 
knight of the right kind, and at first no one thought he 
might be hidden by the rim of that bowl. The same dragon 
that had so nearly crushed Holland held England in his 
coils. Religious liberty and every other kind of liberty was 
gasping. Then came William and Mary and James, a pale 
reproduction of Philip, slunk away with his Romish ret- 
inue to the safe shores of France. 

That Great Britain, since the revolution of 1688, has 
marched at the head of the army of progress, is in no 
small degree due to William and Mary, who broke the 
shackles from the souls of men and turned slaves to 
soldiers. 

America's debt to Holland, while not so vast as that of 
Great Britain, is at least so large that we gratefully confess 



we never expect to pay it. The Dutch colonists coming 
to OUT shores in 1614, were of less heroic stature mentally 
and spiritually, if not physically, than the Pilgrims who 
arrived at Plymouth in 1620, or the Puritans who came to 
New England ten years later. The Dutch colonists were 
looking for liberty, not to worship, but to barter. 

Holland had sent Henry Hudson, the English sailor, in 
1609, to find a northwest passage to India. That supposed 
passage, like the supposed Elixir of Life and the Fountain 
of Youth and the Philosopher's Stone "led countless gen- 
erations on," many to death, and a few like Hudson to 
glory. Five years after Hudson sailed up the river a fort 
was built at Albany. Nine years later a trading station 
was established on Manhattan, and called New Amsterdam. 
It consisted of a flagstaff, a tall warehouse, a church, and 
a dozen or so one-storied houses with Dutch roofs. 

Captured by the English in 1664 — the English thought 
it most incongruous for these foreigners to cut in between 
their colonies in New England and New Jersey — the name 
was changed to New York. But the Dutch flavor, like the 
scent of the roses in the broken vase, hung around it still. 
Dutch names are stamped, not only on the river itself, but 
on many of the streets of the two cities at either end, and 
on the villages between. Dutch customs, Dutch stability 
and steadfastness, sometimes to the verge of stolidity, have 
been inwrought into the character of the people. 

The Dutch Reformed Church preserved all that was 
best in the mother church, and added the fire of missionary 
zeal. It is one of our aggressive Protestant churches. It 
has no intention of repeating the mistake the Dutch made 
in some colonies, when they built great churches but no 
schools, and compelled the natives to attend the services, as 



Francis Xavier compelled the natives of India to be bap- 
tized, and both Protestant and Roman Catholic, alike, re- 
verted, when the restraint was removed, to their original 
Paganism. This American Dutch church has adopted 
modern methods with lines of circumvallation for slow 
but sure approach to the forts and fortresses of the enemy. 
They have built churches, chapels, schools, academies and 
hospitals for the conquest of ignorance, superstition and 
sin. 

This reformed and Americanized chun^ch has carried 
the war even into the heart of Asiatic Mohammedanism. 
Within a few days march of Mecca, on the shores of the 
Red Sea, where Mohammed drove his camels, the sappers 
and miners of this salvation army are at work. These 
inheritors of the traditions, if not the fortunes, of the 
Dutch colonists are in that land of terrible 
desert and unendurable heat, because they were inspired 
by the heroism of a young Englishman, who gave his life 
to the seemingly forlorn hope of an Arabic mission. 

The youngest son of Lord Kintore, an elder in the Scotch 
Free Church, the Honorable Ion Keith Falconer, was a 
giant physically and a prizewinner in intercollegiate, 
athletic, and intellectual contests. A brilliant career was 
open to him, both politically, diplomatically, and academi- 
cally. To such qualities as his, combined with such influ- 
ence as he could exert, everything is possible in Great 
Britain. 

Hearing a call that rang as loud and clear in his soul 
as the call that made Saul of Tarsus a missionary to the 
Gentiles, young Falconer went to Arabia and there, after 
two years' service, he died, the glorious death of a martyr, 
for Christ's sake. "Of all pulpits," says John Ruskin, 



"from which the human voice is ever set forth, there is 
none from which it reaches so far as from the grave." 
Falconer's voice, heard only in subdued tones in the lecture 
halls of Cambridge, now carried from the grave across 
the sea, and the young Americans of the Reformed Church 
heard his challenge, took up his sword, and are today 
fighting the battle from which he was summoned to his 
coronation. 

It is not defeat, wounds and death that appall; it 
is meaninglessness — the paralyzing conviction that the 
game is not worth the candle. Self-sacrifice for a great 
and glorious cause is never useless, never too costly, is 
never regretted by those who make it and by those who 
understand it. The sword that cuts the Hfe of faith and 
hope is the sword swung in the hand of hate or ambition, 
of pride or envy; the sword whose swish sounds in the 
ears of five or six million soldiers in Europe tonight. 

To die fighting, as Falconer died, to make men free, to 
break down prison doors, to open all God's world to God's 
children, to educate the ignorant, to care for the sick and 
wounded in hospitals more comfortable than any oriental 
palace, to tell the dying of an eternal life of endless growth 
and blessedness, is to make death so glorious that the 
splendor of it illumines life's most commonplace details. 
But to die as fearless men are dying today in the trenches 
of France and Poland, and in the passes of the Carpa- 
thians, who do not know why or for what they are dying, 
is a holocaust of horror over which coming generations 
will wring their hands in shame and pity. 

Little Holland peaceful and contended, asking only to be 
let alone, cultivating with plodding Dutch assiduity, all 
those arts of peace, which produce the plenty and prosperity, 

8 



in which all the world must share, is a high Rembrandt 
light, increasing the intense density of the shadow that 
darkens the rest of Europe where the gieat powers are 
struggling to become greater by destruction and slaughter. 

Twice the nations have heard a call to a Peace Confer- 
ence in Holland's modest "House in the Woods." at the 
Hague. The Palace of Peace which American generosity 
built not far away for future conferences is desolate and 
silent, but a lute-like note sounds from the cities, towns 
and villages of Holland like the subdued music of the 
Bells of Is. calling Emperors and Kings to stop the mad 
and murderous onslaught of soldiers, and imitate Holland 
in her "more excellent way." and no longer cast covetous 
eyes on the vineyards of any Naboth. 

"A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one 
a strong nation," not by conquest, spoliation and robbery, 
but by righteousness, fair dealing and a patriotism so 
broad as to include all nations made by God of one blood. 



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